Businessmen say NASA can cash in on Mars visits

Execs tout advertising, other money-making opportunities

MARK CARREAU, Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Published 6:30 am, Thursday, February 19, 2004

Small businessmen with out-of-this-world ideas urged NASA's U.S. Senate oversight committee Wednesday to ensure a money-making role for the private sector under President Bush's strategy to send human explorers to the moon and Mars.

Their proposals ranged from the sale of tastefully designed $1 million advertising plaques for display within the space shuttle and $1 computer screen savers to the licensing of facilities on the international space station for pharmaceutical research and tourism.

Robert Lorsch, a Beverly Hills, Calif., marketer who lists Procter & Gamble, McDonald's and Sears among his clients, estimates NASA has already missed out on $5 billion in potential royalties from lost advertising. Revenues of that scale could be crucial to countering critics who believe the cost of space exploration is too great, he told a Senate science, technology and space subcommittee hearing in Nassau Bay.

"We have to get resources to this program to make it work," said U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the subcommittee chairman. "This is one way to accomplish that."

Lorsch, who has spent more than 20 years researching space marketing prospects, said the effort has been stalled by legislation that would channel revenues into the U.S. Treasury's general fund rather than to NASA.

Even a temporary change could mean a windfall for the space agency.

So far, NASA's Spirit and Opportunity robotic missions to Mars have produced a record 6 billion "hits" on the agency's Web sites since early January. If only 5 percent of the Web site visits spurred the purchase of a $1 screen saver featuring an image of the Martian landscape, NASA would have earned $300 million.

The exploration strategy outlined by Bush on Jan. 14 would lead to the retirement of the shuttle by 2010 as NASA completes the assembly of the space station. With those milestones completed, American astronauts would return to the moon between 2015 and 2020. The moon would serve as a training ground for astronauts assigned to explore Mars on future missions.

Before it completes work at the space station, NASA should assess the licensing of the outpost's now 4-year-old laboratory module to investors interested in using the gravity-free facility for the production of new drugs and medical research, said Courtney Stadd, a Bethesda, Md., consultant and former NASA chief of staff.

"It's not too early to have those discussions with those involved in scientific innovations," Stadd told the committee.

The space agency could save money by turning to small startups as well as established aerospace companies for rocket launches, Houston businessman Charles Chafer said.

Team Encounter, a 6-year-old company founded by Chafer that sells space on commercial rockets to send personal photographs and strands of hair into space, won a $6.5 million NASA contract last year to test an experimental navigational instrument in space.